The reason your friend's 'gluten-free' diet is making them feel better probably has nothing to do with gluten

As more and more of your friends go gluten-free, you may be
wondering: Is there something to this craze? Is gluten
intolerance a thing? Is it getting more common?

The answer is no.

Only about 1% of people worldwide actually have celiac
disease, the rare genetic disorder that makes people
intolerant to gluten. And that
number is not on the rise, according to a recent
study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Just this month, a group of experts tasked with deciding if we
should screen healthy people for celiac concluded that
the jury is still out on whether doing so would improve
people's health.

And as for all those people who say they don't have celiac but
are just "sensitive" to gluten, a 2013 study out of Monash
University suggested that's probably not a
thing, either.

Alan Levinovitz, an assistant professor at James Madison
University, studies the intersection between religion and
medicine, and says the recent uptick in
self-diagnosed gluten sensitivities comes down to a mix
of psychology and behavioral change.

In his book "The
Gluten Lie," Levinovitz interviews Peter Gibson,
a Monash University professor of gastroenterology who helped
write the 2013 study that found non-celiac gluten
"intolerance" was probably not real. Gibson says the reason
many people who've cut gluten out of their diets claim
they feel healthier is that they've changed how they
eat.

"I've noticed [this] lots of times, even with family members,"
Gibson
told Levinovitz. "They've decided they're eating a lot of
takeaway foods, quick foods, not eating well at all. They read
this thing about gluten-free, and then they're buying fresh
vegetables, cooking well, and eating a lot better."

In other words, while cutting gluten may seem like
it makes your stomach feel better or clears up your
complexion, there could be many other causes.

"Blaming the gluten is easy, but you could point to about a
hundred things they're doing better," Gibson said.

That reality can be a tough pill to swallow, however.

"When it comes to food sensitivities, people are incredibly
unwilling to question self-diagnoses,"
Levinovitz wrote. "No one wants to think that the benefits
they experienced from going gluten-free ... might be
psychological."

On top of that, many people are not good at reliably connecting
what they've eaten to physical symptoms. Studies have shown
that we have trouble remembering what
we ate and when we ate it, and that we're poor
judges of what's healthy and what's not.

So rather than jumping to self-diagnose, see a doctor. And stick
to the science.